And among the last in education, last in healthcare, and last in job creation.

The only reason Texas' economy is doing so well is they have more direct access to cheap labor.

I'd like you to source your facts in your first paragraph.

I'd say the oil and gas industry has something to do with our robust economy as well.

Originally Posted by W. Rabbit

Oh and at least 90% of the state is a desert.

Really?

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Texas

Continental, Mountain, and Modified Marine are the three major climatic types of Texas, with no distinguishable boundaries. Modified Marine, or subtropical, dominates the majority of the state.[3] Texas has an annual precipitation range from 60.57 inches (1,538 mm) in Jasper County, East Texas, to 9.43 inches (240 mm) in El Paso.

Here without resorting to year-by-year analyses and conceding that at least last TWO years in Texas have shown some improvement in their historically abysmal high school dropout rates and test scores, the very fact that their governments are under siege by, quote

"true conservative Christians"...

should be enough to steer rational people out of "Texas' corner" (and by that I mean radicals in Texas) on the issue of secession.

The board is under the new leadership of Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, a former biology teacher who disputes the theory of evolution. She is considered to be one of the panel’s more conservative members. She explains:

“Right now there are six true conservative Christians on the board, so we have to fight for two votes.”

As JNP said, secession is not really taken seriously. As someone from an actual bottom state, Louisiana, I will say that Texas' economy is hands down FAR better than Louisiana's. As far as size of the economy goes, Texas in 2009 was over 8% of the national GDP on its own! The petroleum industry as well as the tech and telecomm sectors have boosted our economy. Education is an odd spot, Texas has some amazing schools but we deal with a VERY high newcomer population with a large amount of non-English speakers. There are bilingual curriculums but they are relatively new. Add to this the amount of service industry jobs as well as construction sectors and this may explain why some opt to enter the workforce.

To your point about cheap labor, this is a sticking point as there are numerous flaws in the labor practices here which has at least a small amount to do with the construction sector hiring undocumented newcomers and bypassing safety regulations. The Labor Defense Project has some downright shameful figures on this.

The 25,000 threshold for the online petition system means that now some assistant deputy secretary's intern has to copy and paste together some boilerplate into a response letter. It has nothing to do with any actual legal compulsion for a White House response.